


Ilex Aquifolium - The Holly Tree

by Berty



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Regency, Eloping, John Watson Loves Sherlock Holmes, Kissing, M/M, Mutual Pining, POV Sherlock Holmes, Reunions, Sherlock Holmes Loves John Watson, Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-29
Updated: 2018-01-29
Packaged: 2019-03-10 16:45:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13505625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Berty/pseuds/Berty
Summary: At four, if you please. SHe did not need to specify where.He has come to say one final goodbye before he leaves England at his family's insistence. It has been years since last they stood here together and Sherlock finds that although many things have changed, some things never will.





	Ilex Aquifolium - The Holly Tree

Dusk is falling even now although it cannot be much later than a quarter off four in the afternoon. The grey, January light is feeble enough through the bare branches of the trees, but here, beneath the spreading leaves of the holly it is dimmer still with barely enough light to check the dial of my pocket watch.

I console myself with the knowledge that I am early; my earnest desire to see you has quickened my steps and brought me to this spot ahead of the hour I proposed for our meeting, and now I must wait. But it is an inconstant agony, and I torment myself with the certainty that you will not come and as often with the surety that you will not fail me.

Peering through the canopy, the barbed leaves so dark a green as to appear black, I can see the path from the village as it traverses the rise. Already the woods are becoming still as even the animals so hardy as to be abroad in winter take themselves off home before the long night falls. The chattering magpie that scolded me as I walked here earlier has moved on to berate another and even his carrying natter has fallen away to nothing in the cold, mauve air.

I check again and again, aware that I must appear both agitated and quite demented, waiting for the first glimpse of you. It cannot come too soon as my poor heart labours to keep up with my racing thoughts and my nervous pacing. I open my timepiece again, holding it to my ear to check its measure when I find that not two minutes have passed since last I looked.

I fear that by the time you come… if you come…I will have worked myself down to my very last nerve and you will find me quite insensible. Surely, you _have_ to come! Perhaps my message did not reach you. Or worse, it reached you and you discarded it unread?

Desperation and wretchedness spin me on my heel and I seek distraction further beneath the holly boughs.

It is quite sheltered under here; the leaves blown in and caught beneath have dried to a pleasing depth, and where the soil is visible it is fine and devoid of weeds. The rains of December that have made such a mire of the country paths hereabouts have not touched this refuge, and even the sharpness of the evening air is here softened.

Placing a hand on the trunk, as I have countless times before, I run a palm over smooth, silver-brown bark and my disposition settles with its familiarity.

Holly is a common, bold sight in hedgerows and woodlands of this county but this tree is an unusually large and ancient specimen. Country people have long held that it is unlucky to chop down a holly tree despite the beauty of its pale wood. Perhaps they subconsciously recall that holly was used as a charm against witchcraft even as they all agree that it is for the sake of Christ’s crown that they do not take an axe to such a tree as this.

In the dimness I lift my eyes, admiring the straightness of the trunk and the profusion of branches and my attention catches on a memorable junction, where two thick boughs protrude at the same height with only a hand’s span between them. Although I squint and stretch I cannot see that which I know to be there, and I resort to reaching up and brushing my fingertips in the space between. At first I cannot find it, though I do not doubt that I have the right spot. But then my fingers fumble and feel a diagonal line, and another, its mirror image. _WSSH._ And beside it, not even a finger space further, another set of letters. _JHW._

The summer we carved them, I was ten and you were twelve. We were already of a height much to your irritation. I recall that neither of us had the penmanship or the right blade to make a curve of my _S_ or of your _J._ I remember how bittersweet that day was. We were reunited for the summer, but already the shadow of our impending leave-taking was stretching out to touch us. I was being sent away to another new school that year and you were already a day–boy at a grammar school in a nearby town for which your hard work and keen wit had won you a scholarship.

I’d been overjoyed to spend July and August roaming the woods and fields with you, as I was certain we always had and always would, but the week before I was to leave we had sat here, even here beneath this tree, and carefully planned for whatever adventures we could imagine when Christmas would reunite us again. When the melancholy overcame me, I denied that I was snivelling, not wishing to appear anything but worthy in your eyes but you were not fooled. You took a small pocketknife and set your name and mine into the bark of the holly, side by side. We were both convinced that they should remain there eternally, filling in for us when we could not be there in person.

Eternity had seemed such an achievable possibility then.

We shared our first kiss here – each scared that the other would reject him. Excited and joyful, terrified and rushed, both of us in fear of being discovered.

We learned what it was to love the other here, all shaking, frozen hands and warm breath. Guilt and desire; this was the beginning of our secrets and confidences.

We discussed what the world required of us here, as impossible as it seemed at the time. Sad eyed, we shared quiet words of expectation and hollow reassurances.

And we shared our last kiss here, hot tears stinging eyes that quickly hardened, words that cut and hands that pushed and punched even as they longed to hold.

This tree became a touchstone to me – a place apart. I come here still whenever I can. Once or twice I even imagined that from afar I saw you here too, walking the path to or from the village. You never looked my way and I never called your name.

Of course, the locality is not so rife with persons of good standing that we have been invisible to the other. I have seen you from time to time when visiting my family’s home, as I am sure you have noticed me. We are very careful on such occasions that our eyes do not meet, and that any words that must pass between us for propriety’s sake are brief.

So the years have gone by. You have become a doctor, a soldier, a husband, an invalid and a widower. You have returned to the village to live, a country practitioner, well-loved and admired by your patients and neighbours. And I… well, I am sure you have heard of my exploits. The villagers like to share stories of the degenerate son from the manor house. Their tales, though not unfounded, become more salacious with every telling, I am sure.

And all this time our names have abided, the space between them eroded by the passing seasons as the bite of the blade widened, forced apart by the growth of the tree; my _H_ and your _J_ long since locked together.

A Mistle Thrush rattles a threat from the top of the tree, warning away those who might steal the scarlet berries he thinks of as his own, and my heart leaps into my throat at the sound. I tut at him and at myself, and dust my hands off. Straightening my coat, I settle deeper into its warmth and turn as the light changes.

The sun has found a break in the bruised, violet clouds only moments before it must surely set. It floods the ground with low, slanted, primrose light, shockingly beautiful and fragile.

And here you are.

No more than three yards separate us, scant few steps that nonetheless feel like a journey of days and leagues uncounted. You have dressed for the weather, gloved and booted, but without a hat.

Even now you are undecided, I see - impermanent as if the slightest sound might send you from this place. Your fist tightens around your cane and I have a sudden realisation of the inconvenience it must have been for you to negotiate the filthy, waterlogged pathway. My fingers ache to reach for you, to offer you an arm or a shoulder as an apology, but my welcome is by no means assured, so I resist.

In your other hand is the card I sent. I cannot now recall the number of versions I wrote and discarded before I settled on the simplest of requests.

_At four, if you please. S._

You straighten under my gaze, as if you could appear anything but perfect to my grateful eyes. I already know that your hair is greying prematurely around your temples, silver threads in the straw blond. Your skin is winter-pale and tired, and your posture speaks of wounds both deeper and greater than those you received on the field of battle. But your eyes, John, your eyes have not changed at all. I used to wonder that they could appear the blue of cornflowers one moment and that of stormy, slate skies the next. They are the kindest eyes I have ever known, even when I have not deserved such consideration.

All last night I lay awake deciding what I should say. I prepared and discarded more words than I have spoken in weeks; nothing matched that which I most desired to say, I felt. Near to dawn, I slept finally with a resolve to speak only facts and truths, a habit cultivated over some years and which has not endeared me to many. Still, I could not bear to speak in their prattling platitudes and preferred polite society’s displeasure to making of myself a sycophant.

Yet my truths are more than I have words to say and the facts will hurt me more than you will ever know.

I see I have delayed too long. You tip your head to one side in a gesture so sweetly familiar that I fear my heart will burst. You nod and smile slightly, as if your predictions have been realised and you turn, preparing to push through the prickled walls of our world back out into theirs.

“I’m leaving,” I say. Our first conversation in so many seasons, and already I have misspoken. But you pause, listening. I look away to watch the last light pick out the fallen crimson berries like so many drops of spilled blood. It is more comfortable to speak without your eyes on me.

“For…for good this time. It is a condition of the arrangement my brother has made for… Well, it hardly matters. I just wanted the chance to see you once more and say... that I wish you well. To wish…”

My throat is closing up, trapping so many words unsaid. “To wish that things had been different for us.”

I should stop now, for I have already gone further than I intended. But it seems that I cannot but lay myself bare to you. “I should have fought for you. I should have been a better man that I might have deserved you.”

How can I still be breathing with such a weight upon my chest that I cannot swallow? “I should have… told you… that…I…”

“I love you.”

At first I think the words are mine – your dear voice is so often in my head, my constant companion, the first thing I hear upon waking and the last murmured goodnight. But you turn to me and your eyes are washed with tears.

“I love you, Sherlock. I never stopped. I tried to, of course, when…but…”

We seem unable to do anything but stare. You breathe unevenly, fighting to say the things that there are no words yet made for as I already know to my cost.

Your declaration is an unendurable sweetness and even as it fills me, I find that I cannot but recognise that I knew it all along. How could it be otherwise when my own heart has remained unchanged? You were always the better man; why should it be any different in matters of love?

“Come with me,” I implore, my resolve to be dignified abandoned the second I saw you awaiting my attention.

“Do not go,” you breathe simultaneously.

Our synchronicity amuses you. Your smile; how I have missed it, even when it is as sadly fond as the one you bestow on me now.

“Sherlock,” you murmur.

“John, come with me,” I urge you, for already I can hear your arguments. I see them in the lift of your brow and taste the ashes of their sentiment on my tongue.

Respectability. Security. Purpose. Why would you surrender those hard-won rewards? It’s as if ten years have stepped aside and the young men we were face each other again. The same argument. The same players. Love or legality. Devotion or decorum. Scandal or seemliness.

I disregarded all your arguments then as meaningless, but they were not to you. At first I thought your care was for yourself, being all-unwilling to choose a path that would put you at odds with society. I know now that I was quite unfair in my assumption; my misery spoke for me. Your care was for me far more than for yourself. You could not have borne to be the reason that I was ostracised by my family or my peers. An attachment such as ours, had it become known, would only have hastened what I have already accomplished for myself without your assistance. Hence my message today that brought you here.

“Please,” I add softly, and where are my clever words now, for I am incapable.

Your eyes close and mine slide away. I do not know what hurt I hope to spare myself for your voice will carry more than passing well even when I am not watching you.

You close the distance between us in the second that I look away. Your hands are careful but not hesitant as you reach beneath my coat, skim around my waist and settle in the small of my back – the chill of them reawakening a visceral flood of memories - whispers and laughter and stolen kisses.

Taken by surprise I am slower to return your embrace than I wish to be. Your shoulders are broader and stronger than I remember and as I embrace you, I am moved by the scent of you – it is summer and meadow grass and the tightness of too much time in the sun across my cheeks and nose. It is perfect contentment, only surpassed a moment later when you lift your face to press a warm kiss to my cool lips. It resonates through me and steals both my breath and my wits.

I sense your concern as you pull back to see my face in the light that is left us. “Sherlock?”

My answer is shamefully less than eloquent as I slide my fingers into your hair and reclaim your mouth, quite ungently. It appears that I am forgiven this impertinence though as your lips open to me and I fall into their well-remembered touch. If this must be our final meeting then I will take whatsoever it is you will allow me, for even your smile is more than I had imagined I deserved.

Somehow I turn you and push you further back into our refuge. Your shoulders touch the trunk of our holly tree and you fumble with your gloves, pulling them from your hands and casting them off. I have forgotten none of your passionate nature, yet my stomach swoops as your warm hand catches my jaw, calming me and turning my frantic efforts into something infinitely, achingly sweeter. Sharing breath, I can feel you smile against my mouth, feel you shape words of love and apology and regret. Your words match my own, long held but only now whispered into your skin.

Your hands warm me wherever they pass and we sigh each time we encounter unclaimed skin to caress and relearn. Your mouth seems as eager as mine, though I know not how it can match my enthusiasm. My lips tingle with the heat of our kisses, but I cannot help but find yours again and again, waiting for me with a welcome that I have yearned for every day since we parted.

Time so perfectly spent slips from my grasp and only when a dog fox barks in the distance do I open my eyes to the truth that darkness has long-since fallen.

Stepping back and feeling the rush of cold air flood between us, I try to explain. “My family have decided that it would be better…”

“Ah, how is her majesty?” you ask wryly, and I notice that you do not relinquish your grasp on me, your fingers laced through mine.

It is an old joke but startlingly apt when applied to Mycroft, and it quirks the corners of both our mouths.

“He is well all the time he is not asked to go more than an hour without a meal.”

You used to know my brother quite well, though you have not spoken more than a handful of words to him since you came back from the war. His intelligence is beyond dispute, but his grasp of the human condition is more academic than practical. It is his scheme that will take me away from you once more – a scandal averted, the family's black sheep sent on to distant pastures new.

“If I could stay, I would,” I murmur, understanding that the reasons do not matter for they will make not one whit of difference.

“When?”

“Tomorrow.”

The darkness cannot hide your surprise at my answer. “So soon. Where will you go?”

“I gather that I am to be the unwilling recipient of an educational tour as befits a young man of my breeding. But while most of my peers return after a season or two of exposure to the influence of civilisation, mine is to be…extended. Indefinitely.”

Your face softens from consternation to compassion as you understand that I am as good as banished, dismissed from my home and my family for my indiscretions and I try not to imagine which of these might have reached as far as this county and your ears.

“Are you to travel alone?”

“A companion guide has been engaged for me. I am to meet him in Le Harve. I do not anticipate that our association will be a lengthy one.”

The fox barks again, and the bell for Evensong begins to call the faithful to the church my ancestors caused to be built in the village. It is a hard, cold sound, demanding, not inviting. It shivers across air already weighed down with winter and serves to remind me that my absence will soon be marked and I am in no hurry to have the slight concessions I have successfully negotiated taken away. Though my heart is lead, I know I must go.

As before, the words will not come, and all I can do is press your fingers slightly as I untangle my own from yours. I am numbly surprised to find that I am yet living, so wretched is this moment. I cannot bring myself to say a final goodbye, preferring to pretend that our parting will be only temporary, as it was in our youth.

“You will require the services of a physician, then,” you say, in a tone quite gruff. It is not a question.

I believe I must have misunderstood.

“Surely a family of such standing as your own would be remiss to send their youngest son without a medical practitioner in attendance.”

“I… I do not follow you…”

“And this fellow in Le Harve is to act as your personal secretary and valet too, I take it?” As if I have been slighted in some way, your voice holds a note of disbelief.

“I believe... I do not know, actually. Mycroft has made all the arrangements. I must admit to having had little say nor interest in the details,” I explain. “John…”

“Then I see no other choice but to take up your kind offer and accompany you.”

For a few heartbeats, I am quite thrown. The night gathers, dark and still, and I wonder if I have indeed lost touch with reality. I search your face for some vestige of sense.

“John?” I breathe. “Do not jest with me.”

“I have rarely been more solemn, Sherlock.” And indeed, despite the shadows, your shoulders are squared and determined. Your gaze does not waver from mine and my breath leaves me in a rush at the sight.

“I have been blessed with a life of great diversity and opportunity. If there is one certainty I have gained from this variety, it is that there is no certainty in this life at all. It has made me evaluate my future in a different light and reconsider decisions I have made in my past. The conclusion that I have drawn is that one should never let fear make decisions for you, for the outcome of even the safest choice is equally at the whim of the fates. So I accept your kind offer and now I will take my leave for I have much to settle before I meet you in…?”

Your eloquence leaves me blinking like some witless dolt. I fear the same is apparent on my features if your amusement is anything to go by. Taking pity upon my incapacity, you step in and press a gentle kiss upon lips that are already drunk on your taste. With a mischievous smile, you step away, break a sprig of holly from the nearest branch and tuck it into the buttonhole of my coat.

“Sherlock, from where and at what time is the ship to sail?” Your fingers push my mess of curls away from my forehead and linger there, feeling perhaps as I do; that it is as if no time has passed at all since last you attempted to tidy my rebellious hair.

“Dover. The morning of the 25th,” I recite, that which I had numbly accepted, now blooming within my chest to become synonymous with a re-birth, the beginning of the life we should always have had – together.

“The 25th, I will see you there. I have no doubt that Mycroft will hear of your new arrangements, but by then we will be quite nicely beyond his grasp. Until then, my love.”

You press one last kiss upon me and walk to where your cane lies abandoned on the leaves. Although you retrieve it, I cannot help but notice that you carry it as you push through the gap in the foliage and out into the cold evening air, breaking the spell that lingers beneath the holly. Nor do you use it as you set yourself onto the path back toward the village and the little cottage you have called home these past years.

“John!” It is too dark to see detail, but I observe that you turn toward me again. I imagine your look of inquiry, your smile as you anticipate my words.

“The 25th. I will be there. Trust me,” you call, pitching your voice low, for myself alone.

I cannot bring my feet to move before the last glimpse of you has passed and your footfalls have faded only to the sounds of a winter’s evening. But then I too turn toward home and, one last time, tardy through lingering longer with John Watson than I should have, I run.

Tomorrow cannot come soon enough.

 

Fin

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the New Beginnings Challenge. Unbeta'd.
> 
> If anyone is interested, then I imagine that the war John returned from were the Napoleonic Wars, possibly the Peninsular War or Waterloo, when military medics and surgeons were beginning to make real progress in the treatment of the wounded. This was towards the end of the period during which young men of means and breeding would take the Grand Tour as part of their education, visiting European sites of historical and cultural importance.
> 
> I'm on Tumblr here - https://bertytravelsfar.tumblr.com if you want to say hi!


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